Nature Versus Nurture
by DarkMasterofCupcakes
Summary: Thanks to a scientist who calls himself "Breeder", several young heroes and villains find themselves being used in an experiment to prove which is correct: nature or nurture? After all, what better subjects for an experiment about behavior than the children of heroes and/or villains? RobStar BBRae Flinx etc. Prologue is OC-centered, rest of the story is focused on canon characters.


Reed Donovan cursed as he knocked his mug, causing the ceramic cup to tip over and spill freshly made (and therefore, steaming hot) coffee into his lap. A strange sputtering sound caught his attention and he instantly forced himself to calm down.

"I'm sorry, Neonate. I shouldn't use such awful language" Reed said with a smile, patting the strange robot that was floating near his head.

Neonate made an odd whirring noise, which seemed to be its way of cooing, and lowered itself onto Reed's head.

The dark-haired man bent his neck slightly due to the weight on his head, but continued with his morning routine.

He grabbed his breakfast plate and covered it with his normal breakfast food: some scrambled eggs, three slices of bacon, a slice of buttered toast, and a small amount of whatever happened to be left over from dinner the night before. Today, he would be having brown rice along with the typical breakfast food.

Normally, he would be having coffee with his meal, but since he spilled the last mug-worth that he had, he would have to settle for orange juice, and not even the freshly squeezed stuff.

"Of course…" Reed muttered crossly, finding that the container of orange juice concentrate was still mostly frozen.

The robotic fetus floated off its "father's" head and grabbed the ice-cold container from him, hugging it close to its round stomach, just above the clear tube that extended from Neonate's navel to the back of its head.

After a few seconds, the strange little robot handed the container back to Reed.

The man shook the still cold container, and was pleased to find that the sugary substance inside had been thawed into a liquid state.

"Thank you, Neonate" he said, pouring the concentrate into a pitcher and diluting it with water in order to make juice.

As he poured himself a glass of orange juice, Reed looked at the robotic fetus, who had been staring at him, the red lights of its eyes glowing and its hands clasped together hopefully. The forty-eight-year-old chuckled and ran a hand through his hair, sighing when he noticed that he had pulled out some of his hair.

"Yes, Neonate, you can have the plastic" he told Neonate, who once again made its strange little coo.

It quickly floated over to the counter, where Reed had left the now empty container of juice concentrate, and picked up said container.

The little robot opened its perfectly round mouth, revealing a circle of blades on the inside, and began feeding the plastic container its open mouth. The blades spun rapidly, causing the plastic to be reducing to a chunky liquid, which then traveled through the tube on the fetal robot's stomach. It was an odd way of "eating", but it was the only way that Neonate would eat, and thus, the only way it could continue to develop mentally.

Anyway, Reed had long since gotten over his creations strange way of getting energy, and didn't even notice the loud clicks coming from the other side of the kitchen, deciding instead to sprinkle a small amount of grated cheese onto the eggs.

"Night-night, Dada" Neonate's robotic voice called, followed by a series of clicks that signaled that it was entering sleep mode.

Reed could have sworn his heart swelled up at the sound of Neonate calling him "Dada", as it always did. He looked at his plate, which was still mostly full, and sighed.

"Well, I guess I'll be having breakfast for lunch again" Reed muttered to himself, placing his breakfast plate into the microwave.

He then walked over to where Neonate was hovering and brought the robot into his arms, adjusting quickly to the ten pound weight.

With his robotic offspring slumbering in his arms, Reed walked into his study, placing Neonate into the shipping crate that served as its bed before signing onto his computer.

"Let's see…How have my investments turned out?" he muttered aloud, logging onto several different websites, mostly those involving bio-technology and genetic sciences, though some were simple banking websites.

After seeing how much money he had acquired through his recent contributions to science, Reed signed off the websites and put his computer into hibernation mode.

The man looked around the study; it had been over twenty years since he had left his home for more than three hours at a stretch. Hell, he hadn't left the underground "house" for the past week.

He never found any reason to go out anymore than was absolutely necessary, which was when he needed groceries or, less frequently, when he needed new clothes.

Reed shook his head as though trying to dislodge the thoughts from his mind before scanning the walls again.

He could barely see the cream-colored wallpaper on three of the walls; there were so many things hanging on these walls.

There was his diploma from the McCoy-Xavier School of Genetics and Biological Technology, pictures of Neonate that had been taken over the past three years of its existence (these were the most abundant), and some pictures of his own family, who he hadn't seen in years.

Green eyes fell upon the fourth wall, the one with the most wallpaper still showing, and Reed felt his blood run cold. That was the wall that held all of his personal achievements, other than the creation of Neonate, but it also held the worst memories of his life.

Slowly, he stood up and walked over to the wall, reading the various newspaper clippings boasting about the things he had done to get him noticed.

_The Benefits of Human and Meta Breeding Programs: A Comprehensive Essay by Reed V. Donovan _was the largest piece of paper, and the one that caught Reed's attention the quickest.

He remembered very well when that article had been published in his hometown's newspaper. His memory of how his fellow students had reacted to reading the article was even more vivid.

_"And I thought people who bred animals were sick!" _

_"You gonna force people to have sex now, Breeder?" _

_"He's like a rapist, only he doesn't get any of the fun for himself!" _

_"Yeah, what a freak!"_

_"Breed 'em, breed 'em. Make 'em fuck then leave them!" _

Reed instantly stopped shaking-he hadn't even realized that he'd been shaking in the first place-when he felt Neonate's hand on his own.

"Dada?" the little robot asked, looking up at the man who had given it life.

Reed offered a smile, trying to keep Neonate from seeing how upset he was.

"I'm fine, Neonate. Really" he said with a grin.

Neonate said nothing, but it was clear that it didn't totally believe what its "father" was saying.

The dark-haired man looked up at the clock on the wall and grinned slightly.

"Time to check on our friends, Neonate" he said, going back to the computer and turning it back on, before typing in a series of codes.

As he finished typing in the last of the fifty-thousand alpha-numerical codes, various videos appeared on the screen. He grinned as he began watching the videos, which seemed to be point-of-view shots of various places, occasionally pressing a button to change it to a "third-person" shot.

Reed felt his grin widen; this was one of his most glorious accomplishments (other than the creation of Neonate, of course): the Bio-Bugs and Spy-Bugs, nearly invisible and harmless bio-tech devices that allowed him to monitor, and even control for brief periods of time, people who had extraordinary abilities.

Originally, the devices had only been programmed to seek out Meta-humans and implant inside of their bodies, but once Reed had realized that the planet had become home to aliens and supernatural humanoids as well as humans and Meta-humans, he had altered their programming to seek out energy.

It had taken him years to perfect the technology, but the results were definitely worth the effort.

Now he had the ability to see what most of the people with superpowers in the world were doing…

Well, at least those who had been successfully bugged; many of the bugs had been unable to burrow themselves into the body of their "hosts", meaning Reed was unable to monitor them.

It didn't really matter; he had more than enough to keep him busy.

Realizing that one of the third-person shots was showing a young woman about to undress, the man blushed and instantly changed the image so he was seeing the scene from her point of view. He may be spying on these people, but that didn't mean he didn't have standards.

"Dada?" Reed looked away from the screen and smiled at Neonate, who was holding a rather thick book in its hands.

"Story?" it questioned, holding up the book.

"Oh, Neonate…I'm busy…" Reed began, sighing as Neonate let out a disappointed little noise.

"Well, I guess we can have story time for a little bit" he said, taking the book into his hands and allowing Neonate to settle into his lap.

He read the title of the rather thick book Neonate had handed him: The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of Nature versus Nurture. 

"You have an odd taste in books, Neonate. Just like me" Reed muttered with a chuckle, before opening the book and beginning to read aloud.

After half an hour of reading, he paused and looked at Neonate to judge the robot's reaction, only to find that it had gone back into sleep mode.

The green-eyed man once again placed his robotic child into the shipping crate that acted as its crib. He then went back to monitoring the individuals he had bugged, occasionally minimizing certain videos so he could open others.

Suddenly, he had an idea, something that would sound totally insane to most people, but it made perfect sense to him.

Nature versus nurture; it was a debate that had been going on for so many years. What determined how you acted, your genetics or the people who raised you?

So far, nobody knew which was true, because most people agreed that there was no way to actually test either side of the theory.

Most people didn't get psychological evaluation unless somebody else figured they needed it, so when a child grew up to be a rapist or a murderer, they only evaluated the kid themselves, not the parents. If something came up in the evaluation, most people would assume that genetics were to blame.

However, it was far from impossible to "trick" a psychological evaluation; people did it all the time in order to plead insanity in murder cases.

Reed, who had always had an interest in the nature versus nurture debate, had theorized that the best way to see which side of the theory was correct would be to evaluate a set of biological parents, as well as a set of potential adoptive parents, make sure that the adoptive parents' evaluation didn't match with either of the biological parents, give the baby to the adoptive parents, and then monitor the child's behavior over the years.

If nature was what caused certain behaviors, then the child would act like the parents who they were actually related to, rather than the parents who raised them, and vice-versa.

Reed had once brought this idea up to his professor, only to be turned down.

"After all," the professor had said, "the evaluations can be fooled, we can't force people to give their babies up for adoption for an experiment, and even if we could, most people would agree that it wouldn't be worth the money to monitor normal kids to see if they turned into felons. Most of them steal and do drugs and drink and God knows what else, just because they are young adults. Nothing particularly noteworthy".

"Normal children wouldn't be worth monitoring…" Reed began, turning to his monitor with a smile. "But what about the children of Metas and the like?"

It was the perfect idea; he actually knew how the minds of the people he had bugged worked, unlike most doctors; he could even choose the biological parents…

"Only one way to know for sure" the dark-haired man said, opening one of the cabinets of his desk and pressed a code into a keypad connected to the inside of the cabinet, which opened a secret compartment.

He then pulled out a small box and opened it to reveal what appeared to be a swarm of nearly microscopic metallic maggots.

"Well, my little larvae," Reed muttered, scooping of a handful of the microscopic robots and dumping them onto the desktop, where they squirmed around. "Looks like I have a chance to use you now".

After making sure that the "larvae" couldn't fall off the desk, Reed turned his attention back to the screen.

"Now, who to choose? Let's see…Wally West and Nicole Diaz...or Jennifer Roswell…or Linda Park…or whatever name she's using for herself. That should be a good pair. One a hero, one a villaines", Reed said with a nod.

To make things even better, they didn't hate each other-though Nicole/Jenny/Linda/whatever certainly acted like she hated Wally whenever they happened to cross paths, both during "work" and when playing casual-which meant Reed didn't have to feel like he was conducting a rape like an orchestra.

"Well, that's settled, then" Reed said, opening up a word document and typing in the words NAT V. NUR BIO-PAR, before beginning to make a list. The first entry on the list was a series of letters, but not an actual word: KFLASH-JINX.

He then saved the file, shut off the videos for the people he had already chosen, and started the process over again.

"Now, who else…?" he muttered to himself, looking over the dozens of people he could possibly choose for his little experiment.

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. The Teen Titans, and all characters related to them, are the property of DC Comics, Warner Brothers, and anyone else who has worked on either the comics or the animated series. If I did own Teen Titans, either the show would have gotten at least one more season, or it would have ended with "Titans Together", not "Things Change". I do own Reed "Breeder" Donovan, Neonate, and the results of Breeder's little experiment. The book that Breeder reads to Neonate is also not owned by me, but I honestly cannot remember who actually wrote it.

Okay, before anyone says anything, don't worry about the fact that the Titans aren't really mentioned much in this chapter. This is only a prologue, a way for me to set the stage of the story and provide some background. I figured it would be more efficient to introduce Breeder in this prologue and show his plan to the readers rather than risk everyone getting confused during the story because they don't know who's doing everything, and why. After this, the focus will be on the canon characters. Breeder won't even appear again in person for a long time.

This is something of a Semi-AU, taking place after Season Five. The Brotherhood of Evil (Brain, Mallah, Rouge, and Immortus) are frozen, but the other criminals are not, and Jinx is no longer with the HIVE Five, but she's not actually with the Titans or Kid Flash.

Now, for a little interaction from the readers: while I have chosen one couple (Kid Flash and Jinx), I have not decided on any others. I am planning to have six couples in the story for Breeder's experiment, so I need you guys to choose. The only rules are that if a character has already been chosen once, they can't be chosen again (meaning both Kid Flash and Jinx are no longer available), and they must both have abilities (meaning Robin and Speedy would not be candidates). I would prefer not to use the members of the main team, but I am not totally against it. Whichever couples get the most votes will be the most likely chosen.


End file.
